Poetry
FALL 2024Pantoum for Spring Peepers
by KATE CHENEY CHAPPELL
When their names vanish from the lexicon,
dawn will break, a shattering of glass,
a puncture in deflated sky. Oak and birch
will lie together on ruptured ground.
Dawn will break, a shattering of glass.
Oak and birch will lie together on ruptured ground.
What were these for? Shade made
possible pattern, leaves: breath.
Oak and birch will lie, together on ruptured ground.
The seasons have no sound now.
Pattern once possible leaves breath.
Damp snow on bark was once a kind of writing.
The seasons have no sound now.
A taxonomy melts by degrees, leaves no trace.
Damp snow on bark was once a kind of writing.
What the heart wants: the sound of Pseudacris crucifer.
A puncture in deflated sky. Oak, birches
fall into the cracked mirror of the pond.
Not a peep from a cold vernal pool,
When their names vanish from the lexicon.
Kate Cheney Chappell
Kate Cheney Chappell is a painter, printmaker, and book artist. Kate has exhibited throughout Maine and New England and has completed writing and printmaking residencies at the Vermont Studio Center. As a Teaching Fellow at Harvard with Dr. Robert Coles, she taught The Literature of Social Reflection in the 90s. She has had numerous one-person exhibits, such as “InterRelated” at Chatham (Pittsburgh), honoring the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and her work can be found in the collections of the New Britain Museum of American Art, Portland Museum of Art, Bowdoin College, and the New York Public Library. Her poems and artwork have appeared in Chrysalis, Words & Images, Emrys Journal, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and on the cover of Chana Bloch’s Blood Honey. Kate is co-founder of Tom’s of Maine and founder of Stone Island Press, which received an award in Maine for anthology in 2015.